this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2024
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A bit ignorant take. Grammatical gender does not always imply the actual gender of the subject, and Spanish can easily form gender neutral-nouns or sentences. For example: "persona no binaria" is entirely made with "feminine" words, but it's meaning (non-binary person) is entirely gender-neutral.
This is also why most Spanish speakers make fun of anglophones who use "latix". It's embarrassing, condescending and completely unnecessary, it shows a lack of understanding of how Spanish is actually used by it's speakers
Here's another common way to make gender-neutral Spanish, while making it explicit:
Take the sentence "The workers are radicalizing." Workers is "Trabajadores" a masculine-plural word. The Royal Academy of Spanish Language, clarifies that the maculine form of any noun includes participants of any gender, so to say "Los Trabajadores se están radicalizando" would be grammatically correct, and no Spanish speaker would really asume you only have male workers. However, to make inclusion more explicit, it isn't uncommon for companies to use double articles: "Las y los trabajadores se están radicalizando." Notice that the noun has remained in masculine form, instead the articles have been used to make it explicit that the writer does see gender as a binary. You would see this in office-settings, but as you can hopefully see. Doing it like this actually reinforces the binary perspective, rather than the other way around.
TL&DR: Use "Latino/a" or "Hispanic", instead of "Latix" if you don't want your maid and gardener to laugh their asses off at your expense. Also, all words in Spanish have gender, that doesn't mean all people have to as well.
Even as a boy in latinamerica I found strange that my cousins where "las primitas" when I was not included and "los primitos" when I was. Like, what gave me so much power to change the gender of a group of 9 girls? Anyway, since 2005 or so, my small communist mailing group was discussing the way we use gendered words, being influenced by Spanish feminist groups. We were like 10 guys and a woman on the mailing list, and after a lot of discussion we decided to start using feminine gender for everything, given that "nobody" care.
I've seen latine used by some Spanish speakers. It seems like opinions are certainly more positive about it than Latinx, but that's a low bar
Latine is at least pronounceable, and doesn't sound like you're describing your former spouse from South America.
Hispanic here, absolutely hate Latinx, feels like a term made by English speakers on behalf of us for "inclusivity"
It's not though. That's a myth. It was created by latine nonbinary math nerds on old internet message boards. Since they were math nerds, they used x to represent a variable that could be anything. They only designed it for use on message boards, they never thought about how to pronounce it. You're allowed to think those latine geeks did a bad job, but calling them English speakers is factually incorrect.
Source? I wanna see the old message board post! Just out of curiosity, genuinely.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0921374017727850
That's exactly what it is, so that's an accurate feeling.
The irony is that in wanting to include their variable/neutral gender via x or @ instead of 'o' or 'a', people that use screen readers usually get excluded, as the programs don't recognize "latinx" or "latin@" - same applies to Portuguese
Similar issue in Italian. Neutral gender in Latin consolidated in the male gender. It is what it is. There are some English-speakers who have really hard time to understand that different languages work in different ways, somehow.
That said, there are discussions about using both articles or more weird stuff like "*" or even the Ə character to replace the ending, which most people are not used to yet, though.
Yet that does not logically imply that it is as it should be. And if it should be as it isn't, then the fact that it is what it is tells us that it should be improved.
Sure, but my point is:
In fact, what I mentioned above (about * and the schwa) are processes that exist among speakers to address what some perceive as a problem in the language. However this is something that for obvious reasons only applies to written language as both of them are not pronounceable.
Different languages also have a different prescriptive vs descriptive balance, hence changes happen differently.
You simply can't transport English "solutions" to problems (I.e. neutral words) to Spanish (or Italian), because neutral for this language is the same as masculine. However, for speakers, gender is not perceived in the same way it is perceived in English. It is completely obvious (I can speak for Italian, but given the similarity I am sure the same applies to Spanish) that both "umani" (humans) and "persone" (people) include everyone, even if the first is a masculine word and the second is a feminine word, grammatically speaking. Nobody thinks of the gender of the word as the gender of the concept, because that's not how the language works. When you want to do that, you add context that make it semantically obvious. This is apparently how English works instead, because gender has basically no other function, so you get things like the one in the screenshot, that doesn't make any sense.
every time i see a /u/mindtraveller post I'm like "that's correct but i hate it"
Thank you, that means a lot. Remember that consensus reality is a social construct produced within the conditions of patriarchy and white supremacy.
Doesn't mean the current attempt is actually doing a good job at improving the situation, tho
The current attempt is Latine. What's wrong with E? I thought everyone generally liked it.
You still have to deal with the "el/los" and "la/las", because that depends on the word's gender. Should it be "el latine" or "la latine"? Invent le/les to comply? And when it comes to quantity, un latino, una latina, uns latinos, unas latinas, un(?) latine?
What about the nonbinary workers? Les trabajadores?
"Les" doesn't exist. Just use "Los trabajadores". It means everyone, doesn't matter their gender.
Good news: language is made up. Les exists now. It can be used.
Les is already a word in Spanish used for other things, though.
Not really that much of a difference honestly. My point still stands. Language is made up. We can use whatever words we want to use to convey the meaning we want as long as the people talking agree with the meaning
You are correct but missing a key point: Language is indeed made up, but it works because we agree on how those made up bits are meant to be used. That's why there have dictionaries and we are taught languages in school. So yeah, you can use any sound and word you like to communicate, but that doesn't change the fact that the noises you are making are not "real" (as in with a communally agreed meaning).